Beautify a single web page template

Kind of design: Single web page
Description of every page: We use a template to generate what we call a SmartTranscript, which has embedded audio/video, as well as text and topics.

It is (to be generous) only functional at the moment, and has no real style to it.

I am looking to make it much more usable and beautiful than it is now

Note that all of the javascript/css etc has to be in the page itself. There must be no external dependencies

I have attached several examples (audio and video) as well as the actual template to be updated

Video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yad9dkw02jra6uz/Ricoh%20D5510.html?dl=0
Audio: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hcze9hutcb9rxg3/IVNote105003179.html?dl=0
Audio Template: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ek695ssi6p0kecp/export_document.html?dl=0
Video Template: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dtqmxprfdg9p0c2/export_video.html?dl=0

I want much better use of whitespace, and the logo can be much more discrete (I want the top frame to disappear completely

As one of the people in the office said "It needs to be clean, easy to follow and look a bit more “grown up” than what we currently have. Clear and Simple. The product itself is what people are interested in, so giving it a look and feel of simple sophistication will allow for a nicer user experience. We don’t need anything super fancy. "
Ideas for the visual style: See above and URLs below
Urls to draw inspiration from: https://www.intelligentvoice.com, https://www.techspace.co/, http://www.macandwild.com/, http://www.newstreetwine.com/
Extra notes: We need some design mockups first, then the completed templates